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John Maynard Keynes
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Title: The Economic Consequences of the Peace
Author: John Maynard Keynes
Release Date: May 6, 2005 [eBook #15776]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE
by
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, C.B.
Fellow of King's College, Cambridge
New York
Harcourt, Brace and Howe
1920
PREFACE
The writer of this book was temporarily attached to the British
Treasury during the war and was their official representative at the
Paris Peace Conference up to June 7, 1919; he also sat as deputy for
the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Supreme Economic Council. He
resigned from these positions when it became evident that hope could
no longer be entertained of substantial modification in the draft
Terms of Peace. The grounds of his objection to the Treaty, or rather
to the whole policy of the Conference towards the economic problems of
Europe, will appear in the following chapters. They are entirely of a
public character, and are based on facts known to the whole world.
J.M. Keynes.
King's College, Cambridge,
November, 1919.
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTORY
II. EUROPE BEFORE THE WAR
III. THE CONFERENCE
IV. THE TREATY
V. REPARATION
VI. EUROPE AFTER THE TREATY
VII. REMEDIES
THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked
characteristic of mankind. Very few of us realize with conviction the
intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature
of the economic organization by which Western Europe has lived for the
last half century. We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of
our late advantages as natural, permanent, and to be depended on, and we
lay our plans accordingly. On this sandy and false foundation we scheme
for social improvement and dress our politi
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